Inclusive Religion

Virtually all religious organizations seem to believe that they
alone know ALL of the correct answers regarding religion.
As a direct consequence of this attitude, they also believe that
ALL OTHER belief systems are automatically wrong. If it should
actually be that any of them are correct about this, then the vast
majority of people on Earth have been wasting their effort at
Worshipping!

Our attitude is different. We acknowledge that we humans certainly
have limited capabliity of understanding God and His doings.
This is actually a good thing! If even ONE of us TOTALLY knew
AND UNDERSTOOD the entirety of God's Plan, then that person would
be "equal" to God. This is not only impossible, but it
would be bad even if it could ever occur, because we humans would
tend to misuse such unlimited knowledge (and power).

Therefore, it seems a logical certainty that ALL existing religions
are incorrect when they claim to UNDERSTAND all of God's Plan.
They each probably actually can SEE it, primarily because they
have a Book, like the Bible or the Torah or the Koran, that lays
it all out. But total, true understanding of all aspects of religion and
spirituality are clearly beyond human capability. We can certainly
get really good ideas about some aspects of His Plan, and so our
various religious groups choose to act and think in certain ways
to follow those understandings. The point being made here is that
there are "gaps" in the understanding of EVERY religious
belief system we humans have. Unfortunately, we are not as perfect
as we would like to think we are and
we are not perfectly intelligent or perfectly logical!

Each existing religion (optimistically) believes that They
alone have the complete understanding of just what God is and
how we are supposed to please and appease Him.

If this were actually the case, then the implicit assumption is
that All other human members of All other denominations and All
other religions are Wrong, no matter how insightful, how
intelligent or how committed to their beliefs they may be. This may seem
realistic and possible if there are only a few hundred or a
few thousand believers of such an erroneous belief system,
or if the believers are so naive and
trusting as to blindly follow some smooth talking leader.
Many cults can be discounted for such reasons, but how about
the 800 million current Roman Catholics who have followed relatively
constant beliefs for nearly 2,000 years? Can Protestants
just dismiss ALL of them as stupid? Even if most were,
doesn't it seem likely that at least a few have the Faith and
depth of belief to truly know and worship God?
Doesn't it seem arrogant to immediately dismiss all of them?

And what about all the other Protestant denominations? Can
ONE arrogantly believe that all the others are wrong and
only THEY are right?

A large Denomination (of a million true believers) would still be
assuming that the other 5,000 millions of living people are Lost
and thereby destined to miss the opportunity of entering Heaven.
Since nearly 2,000 millions of these currently consider
themselves Christians (Catholic or Protestant or Orthodox) and thereby
believe that they will each have that opportunity, it is tempting
to conclude that the narrowness of the view of each Denomination
(of excluding Salvation of all others) must be incorrect.

Looking at this from another perspective, does it seem likely that
our Loving, Compassionate, Caring Lord Jesus would participate in
running such a blatantly unfair system? Where the vast majority
of people who devote their lives to Him, and who are passionate
in that Devotion, would be automatically banned from Heaven, just
because they had chosen the wrong Church to walk into? Jesus would
never allow such a thing!

It would seem that the most logical resolution to this problem is for each
Church, Mosque and Temple to recognize that THEIR understanding is
TOTALLY CORRECT but incomplete (which is equally true of all
the others) and that their various Faiths and Denominations are,
in actuality, just subsets of those who have found a correct and proper
way of Worshipping God. A movement toward non-Denominational Christian
churches and general belief in Christ has been rapidly growing in recent
years which partially accomplishes this goal.

In 1522, Martin Luther wrote: "Let us abolish all party names and
call ourselves Christians, after him whose teaching we hold . . . I hold,
together with the universal church, the one universal teaching of Christ,
who is our only Master."

This movement toward non-Denominationalism, essentially an
acknowledgement of our limitations in fully understanding our Faiths, is
definitely moving in the right direction. It could continue even
further, to welcome Catholics, Orthodox, Jews, and even Moslems. After all,
all of these belief systems worship the SAME God/Father/Allah/Jehovah
and recognize the importance of Adam, Abraham, Moses and the Ten Commandments.
They differ in their separate understandings of just what God expects of us
mortals and in how we are to Worship Him. Many times, these
differences in understanding arose based on slightly different
societal environments or different
translations or versions of Biblical source materials.

What if these major religions are actually just subsets of humans
who believe in God? This is possible, and actually even logical. We
Protestant Christians, Roman Catholic Christians, Orthodox, Jews,
and Muslims may just be using different procedures to worship our
One and Only and same God. For Christians, He provided Jesus as the
focal point of religious belief. Once a person has accepted Jesus
as his personal Savior and become a Christian, he has established a
relationship with God. Similarly, if a person accepts the Prophecy
of Mohammad as the proper path, he has established a different but
equally valid relationship with Allah (God.) Different procedures
may have been appropriate to establish the God - relationship because
of differing social orders and structure. God's infinite insight
and wisdom would have realized just which vehicle would be most
appropriate for those peoples at those specific times and places.

If a particular society did not generally revere and respect Moses
or Jesus or Mohammad, that particular society would probably not
be likely to learn to follow God through that particular vehicle. God may
have chosen to approach different peoples, at different times,
in different ways, but always with the same goal - a stable society
with consistent rules of conduct and which generally or universally
worships only Him.

Let's look at a chronology of God's interaction with humans:

The Garden of Eden and The Fall

1a. God creates Adam and then Eve.

1b. Adam and Eve let God down, apparently not paying attention or
understanding His few rather simple rules.

1c. God eliminated many of the special perks that He had imbued
Adam and Eve with, like everlasting life; hopefully, a lesson has been
learned! (very long ago)

The Flood

2a. Humans multiplied.

2b. Again the humans just didn't get it. Their sinfulness was great.

2c. God decided to eliminate all of them except Noah and his family
and their animals. Time for a new (pure) beginning.
Hopefully, they've learned this time! (2000 BC)

Need For The Ten Commandments

3a. Again, humans multiplied and fell into sinfulness.

3c. God figured that He must give the rules in black and white. He
gave Moses the stone tablets which listed the Ten
Commandments. Ah, this should finally get the
humans on the right track! (1600 BC )

The Babylonian Captivity

4a. Again, humans multiplied. They generally fell into sinfulness,
but it seemed that the sons of Israel and Judah showed some hope.
God kept a protective eye over them, but it didn't take long for
many to lose their way again.

4b. God finally allowed the Babylonian captivity of the Jews and
various other difficulties for them.

4c. This FINALLY got through to a substantial number of them, and
ever since, these Jews have worshipped God by the
rules they understood at that time. The Jewish faith began. (500 BC)

No true formal creedal statement exists for Judaism, but one
commonly accepted aspect is that Good Works are necessary and
required, in order to receive the reward of Heaven. The Torah,
or Books of the Old Testament of the Bible are used as Divine.

The Torah makes it VERY clear that there is ONLY one God, as
in the First Commandment.

Jesus

5a. This still left enormous numbers of people without a clue.

5b. God arranged for His son to be born of Mary, with intent that
Finally, all humans would understand just what is expected of them!

5c. The Resurrection of Jesus became the basis of Christianity,
even though Christians still infought over specific beliefs and
procedures and created many of their own sects and Denominations
within Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox churches. (33 AD)

Within two centuries of Jesus' Crucifixion, a collection of Books
was collected together as the New Testament. The existing earlier
Divine texts of the Old Testament were equally followed. The New
Testament taught Christians that they could Worship God (often
called Father) through His Son, Jesus, and that personally accepting
Jesus' Death on the Cross as Atonement for our human sins was the
method of achieving Salvation, and thus entry to Heaven. God came
to be perceived in a peculiar way, where He had Three distinct
Presences to us, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, referred to as
the Trinity. This method of receiving Salvation is ENTIRELY
due to the Grace of God, and can occur only as a result of
individual Faith. This means that Good Works do not contribute
toward receiving Salvation. However, Good Works should naturally
occur AFTER a person is Saved, as a result of the indwelling of
the Holy Spirit in each Christian.

Even though this Three business rather complicates understanding
some things, the Bible makes it VERY clear that there is ONLY
one God.

Mohammad

6a. Still many non-believers were lost sheep. The beliefs of Jews
and Christians just didn't seem to fit in with the societies and
life-situations of many people.

6b. God arranged to teach Mohammad the Way. The followers of Mohammad
wrote down those insights to form the Koran, the basis of
Islam or Muslim beliefs. (600 AD)

6c. A substantial number of people follow Islam as the way to follow
God's Commandments and His other guidelines. The primary Prophet
of Islam, Muhammad, established Islam and his followers collected
his Teachings into the Koran, the Divine Book of Islam.

Muslims follow the "Five Pillars" in their Faith,
which includes Praying five times each day and giving to the poor.

One of the five pillars is the statement that "There is no God
but God . . . ", confirming, as with the others, that there
is ONLY one God.

Modern History

7. Presently, nearly half of all the people on Earth claim to be a
believer of one of these main religions. All of these (Judaism,
Christianity, Catholicism, Islam, Protestantism, Orthodox, and
many smaller groups) worship the same God. Whether He is called
God or Allah or Father or Yahweh or Jehovah, He is being Worshipped,
as the One and only God.

All of these disparate groups maintain the Ten Commandments as
guidelines to behavior. (In the Muslim Koran, they are not presented
as concisely as in the Bible or Torah. They all (in principle)
revere doing good for their neighbors and society in general. They all
believe in angel-like beings (or the Holy Spirit) who can do God's
work on Earth. MANY other parallels exist. These parallels are NOT
accidental!

This still leaves about half of the present world's population
who do not yet actively follow Him. This might yet cause God to
come up with new and alternate ways of getting the remaining humans to
see His light. If so, maybe He WILL cause other prophets (or
maybe even another future Savior) to appear to initiate additional
new groups to worship Him. Then we humans have to deal with the
question of whether such an individual actually does represent
God"s will or whether he is merely a mortal with a personal agenda
driven by evil.

Whether Smith (Mormons) or Koresh (Branch Davidians) or many other
purported Prophets actually represent God can be a tough call -
especially from believers within the Denominations or sects which
follow that individual. It is very tempting for humans to want to
follow someonw who claims to know all the answers! Such individuals
could conceivably be
bringing new insights to us from Him which are necessary to cope
with modern existence. Then again, they may be Satan - driven. Each
individual human must decide whether to follow or not / whether to
invest Faith in such person's teachings or not. Jesus knew that
we would be faced with such dilemmas, and He warned us to be
wary of false Prophets.

If we each are willing to acknowledge our pitifully limited understanding
of these matters, we might be willing to consider that other fervent and
devout believers, whether Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim
or others, may indeed have an equal but different basis for belief in
God, as related to ourselves. In such an environment, we may all
be able to learn much more (from each other) and as a consequence, find
ways to better live in harmony with others with whom we don't always see eye
to eye. I, as a Protestant Christian, should show tolerance, understanding,
and patience for believers of these other of God's religions. That is
the approach that Jesus Taught me! That
attitude should NOT be extended to groups or religions which do not
worship and revere God, such as pagan or sorcery groups.

Most religious leaders in each of the religions discussed here believe
that ONLY their system is correct and proper. This essay is meant to
suggest that EACH probably ARE totally correct and proper FOR THAT
SOCIETY. God obviously knows about the great diversity of humans.
We tend not to ALL agree on almost anything! This essay is meant to
suggest that He has apparently presented to mankind at least three
very different and distinct ways of Worshipping Him, Judaism,
Christianity and Islam, but that all three are recognized and
appreciated by Him. Some modern societies are just not willing to
accept Judaism or Christianity, but maybe they will embrace Islam,
which would give them a method of Worshipping God/Allah. Other
societies might find Christianity more acceptable and embrace that.
Others still, Judaism. None of the three are better or worse
than the others, just different. A person would be initially free
to choose any of the three, but once that decision was made, total
commitment must be made to THAT Faith and all it includes. Devout
commitment to whichever Faith is chosen is the important part.

I cannot claim to see any way to "harmonize" all of the
various beliefs in God among the three principle religious systems
that believe in one God (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam). But I
toss the following speculations out for further consideration:

Muhammad did not understand the concept of the Trinity in Christianity.
When he saw that Christians were revering Jesus as a Divine God,
he saw that as challenging God's (Allah's) First Commandment, that
there is but one God. To Muhammad, Jesus appeared to be a SECOND
God, in obvious violation of the First Commandment. As a result,
Muhammad centrally focused all of his beliefs on there being ONE GOD,
and the most important Prayer in Islam clearly states that fact.

What if Muhammad had clearly understood the Christian concept of the
Trinity? He would then have realized that Jesus actually WAS Allah / God!
Muhammad would then have NOT considered Jesus as being a SECOND God,
but actually the ONE and ONLY God, Allah!

Other than this matter, Christianity and Islam are remarkably similar,
in beliefs, in historical (Old Testament) origins, in virtually
everything! If Muhammad had fully understood the Christian concept
of the Trinity, Islam and Christianity would be essentially identical!

Various Christian groups, including Mormons, believe that Devout
humans have the capability of essentially becoming 'Gods' in Heaven.
Traditional Christians find this extremely offensive and even
blasphemous, because it similarly challenges the concept of One God.

However, there is an interesting point to consider! Christians
all believe that the Holy Spirit "indwells" within each
Believer, as a Guide. What IS the Holy Spirit? As One of the Three
of the Trinity, it IS God! In a substantial sense, Christians
believe that God Himself is within every one of them! This might not
actually be very different from what Mormons aspire to!

Perspectives like these might exist to explain the various diversities
of our various belief systems in God. These two are presented as
examples of the concept.